Will the Matching Grant propel CatholicCulture.org forward?

Through the generosity of four key supporters, Trinity Communications has secured a matching grant of $25,000 to stimulate gifts from other donors during our Easter Campaign. Between now and Pentecost (June 8th), all new donations for CatholicCulture.org will be matched up to the amount of the grant.

Of course, to put this another way, we will receive only as much of the grant as we can match. The success of the Spring Campaign depends on the generosity hundreds of our users, who must move us to our goal by making generous gifts while they can be matched.

Over the past five years, CatholicCulture.org has grown steadily in influence around the world. The total number of users annually has grown by roughly 40% per year, reaching just over five million in 2013, and expected to hit seven million this year. It has been harder, however, to expand our donor pool at the same rate. Each year remains a struggle to make ends meet to continue our mission of enriching faith, strengthening the Church, and forming Catholic culture.

This year began with an almost immediate deficit of $15,000 in January and February. We broke even in March but ran a deficit of $13,000 again in April. The Easter Campaign, with its matching grant, can make up those losses and take us into the Summer fully funded. That’s critical for the simple reason that gifts are always down during the Summer. Without a successful Easter Campaign, CatholicCulture.org would not have sufficient reserves to get through to the more prosperous Fall.

CatholicCulture.org is an extraordinarily efficient agent of the New Evangelization. Our costs in 2013 were less than nine cents for each person served. Considering how often our materials are reproduced in blogs, other websites, radio programs, newscasts, newsletters, emails, homilies and parish bulletins, the number of people we serve almost certainly stretches into tens of millions. We are also an especially valuable source of information to missionaries and other Catholics in poorer regions of the world—available 24 hours a day every day of the year.

Our impressive array of resources includes daily news, regular Catholic commentary, reviews of books and websites, resources for living the liturgical year, and reference materials such as the Fathers of the Church, a Catholic dictionary, and a searchable Catechism. Perhaps it is not surprising that CatholicCultuire.org is the most visited Catholic website with a news service in the entire world, and one of the top five which provide substantial Catholic content of any kind. We do trail the Vatican and the US Bishops, though not by much.

But CatholicCulture.org has no special financial angels, nor is our work funded by a major foundation. This may be part of what makes it so good, that we rely on our own users for our survival. We are beholden to no special interests, so we can serve as a faithfully Catholic but thoroughly independent voice.

Jeffrey Mirus holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Princeton University. A co-founder of Christendom College, he also pioneered Catholic Internet services. He is the founder of Trinity Communications and CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

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